Reflective log 

(Image cited in Finlay, 2008)

Reflecting is an important process for improvement and supports your learning (Finlay, 2008). It can help you understand more about yourself and ways of working. The method i will be using for my reflection is Gibbs Model for Reflection (1988), which i find very useful when looking back at work because it gives clear guidelines to in the reflective process, it even helps me structure my thoughts. I find reflecting to be hard and being objective very challenging so with this model i can have that clear guide to support me in staying on track.

Week One Introduction

Week one we looked at what eLearning does, the effects and how we can use it into practice. We looked at the different definitions of eLearning and discovered that the meaning will need to include all these aspects:

ELearning will involve all these principles in order for it to be effective. In week ones lesson we also looked at the benefits and advantages of eLearning. The biggest benefit I found was that eLearning allows interactions, when it comes to teaching at any age groups; being able to interact with others can effect peoples learning in a positive way. Than we all gained more understandings in the which elearning tools we can use for teaching children, Second life was discussed. 

Planning

For my E-Learning I have decided to use the age group of 13-16 and show them more information about Voting Involving the Parliament.

I firstly brain stormed my ideas in class on what my topic was going to be. I wanted something that i can reflect on from my experiences as a teen, i found that understanding politics was a struggle for me and when i first had the rights to vote at 18 i still did not clearly understand. Having a understanding of politics and democracy is important because it shapes ALL our futures (Baumgartner and Leech, 1988). There is a need for young people to get more involved in democracy because they have the power to make changes and hold influence on how the results may come (Založnik, 2016). For example in the Brexit their was development to believe that the outcome could have been due to the lack of voters including the young people. ‘Only 36% of 18- to 24-year-olds cast their vote in the referendum‘ (Založnik, 2016:1). With this being recent events i thought it will be beneficial to have a topic that was going to change the minds or young people to get them excited about how much power they actually have.  So using this experience i want young people to learn more about youth parliament, i will create a video answering questions about the house of commons and have a quiz at the end to show how much information the children remember and learnt.

Week Two

We looked at the different kind of tools we use that encounter E-learning such as:

• Kahoot
• Google Hang out
• Skyp
• Secondlife.

These tools are used all around the world and I think that it is just amazing how one sight can bring people together. For example ‘Second Life’ this is a great example how reality can be put into game and inclusive to more freedom and escape from the real world.

What I learnt:

• E-learning can affect any age group
• E-learning is generally expanding in schools with the use of tools like Kahoot
• How to operate Kahoot

Week Three

This was a extended part of my planing, i looked at doing the project in the classroom and this was the lesson plan.

Session 1: Introduction of debate (Is schools important)
Learning Objectives: Introduce the children to the activity which involves getting into two groups of for and against on the topic: Is School Important? The children should gain basic knowledge of debating and democracy. They should gain knowledge about the human rights they have and understand the importance to listening to others.
Teacher	Student
Get the children into teams and give a brief outline of the rules and how this activity will run. Present to the children on the history of democracy and how it works. Show the children the rights they have that involve listening to others and people having the right to say their opinions.
Resources Whiteboard

 

Youth Parliament Website

To start with i remembered when i was in high school in PSHCE, they taught us about youth parliament so i went to explore the website to have the children be familiar with the contest. My initial thought was for the children to use it and keep up with the latest news surrounding young people debates and political complains happening all around UK. However from viewing the website it was a huge letdown, it was apathy. I felt frustrated that the one resource i could use to inspire the children was not even up to date for example when i typed my postcode in the toolbar that says ‘Whats Happening Near You?’ nothing comes up. Its quite frustrating that the media moves so fast and there is a lot of feed with a new american president etc conversely on the youth parliament website there is not much update in the news feeds. from January there was a feed and the next one came in March which is a huge gap in the world of politics, than nothing was broadcast in April. O’Toole et al (2003), feel that we are leaving young people out of the loop went it comes to politics because there is simply not enough resources to support them to grow. To conclude (Gibbs, 1998) i felt this is a battle that is possibly ‘Too Big‘ for me to take on and had to change my idea.

**Hay, Gibbs was really useful at reflecting at this stage in the planning.**

Video ideas

Videos are a great way of expressing ideas, giving messages and a great way of encouraging viewers with a topic which you present. I believe i am definitely a visual learner, ‘Visual learners remember best what they see—pictures, diagrams, flow charts, time lines, films, demonstrations, etc’ (Felder, 2000:2). Videos and pictures is a way to get attention (Karppinen, 2005), Karppinen (2005), argues that videos is a great inclusive way to get children and adults learning.

Till this day i still love videos, making them and watching them so for the project i was excited to make a video with a message. Last year for my Multimedia project in year 2 i also made a video with a friend which informed teenagers to be careful and aware to who they speak to and meet online because the risk could be dangerous.

Link to the video Jonathon story: https://youtu.be/hDPvGS1tVCM

This experience taught me a lot in terms of what resources i needed and what to expect when shooting/editing so i thought it was a great way to keep improving my skills with using a video in this new project. One thing i would defiantly change in the future (from the feed back i received) was having a narrator or online facilitator to support the audience with the story line and the message as it was difficult to follow in my video last year.

Planning the trip

 

So i thought the next step should be to plan a trip which i was going to take my two teenage younger siblings one age 14, the other age 16. Looking at the website i saw what would be included in the tour so this could give me ideas on what topics to film for my video however first i wanted feedback from my target audience what topics i should include in the videos and what do they want to learn more about. This sample was taken in the youth group, a mixture of 11-18 years and 16 of them all together, Form C is attached bellow for the children’s co-operation.

Answers:

• How voting works?
• What are the different political Parties in Parliament?
• What is Brixit?
• What can teenagers do now to get more involved with their community?

 

With these answers, i could really have a focus to what i was looking for with my research for my trip at parliament. I was trilled with the results as i thought it could be simple to explain and was actually relevant to their curiosity. The negative part of this was i myself was not too confident with the subject or the answers so i had to learn just as they are learning which could be a challenge.

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Form C     I have read the guidelines in the BAECS handbook on the ethics of observing children and have followed them.   I have obtained signed permission from head of setting and have kept this confidential and securely but can produce it for tutors to see if requested.   Signed: S.Matundu   Name of student : Samba Matundu   Date:  11/11/2016

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Session 5: Principles of multimedia learning

This lesson helped me plan my PowerPoint in terms of involving a video and what I needed in the slides to incorporate the multimedia principles. It gave me a clear view at what I needed for the audience to be activity engaged with what I’m presenting about. At this point of time I was just planning around my topic so building the PowerPoint was a good start for me to developing my activity.

With Mayers work we found that in our presentation using words and pictures is more effective then just words alone (Mayer, 2005). Even his examples of 4, 5 and six where he suggested Modality, Personalization and Voice principles can be beneficial to my video because they are ways of capturing the audience attentions.

 

What I learnt:

• Multimedia affects
• Picture are better than just words alone
• If having audio make sure to have less words on screen as it may confuse others

Making of presentation 

While gathering ideas for doing my presentation i realised i had a lot of other assignments that just made it nearly impossible to do as much as i intended for my project. This realization really made me re-think my whole idea which gave me a step back and it was really hard for me. So literally going back to the drawing board to changing my topic i looked at what i could change it to, to make it much simpler. I came up with freedom of expression which i got the idea from Article 10 in the Children Rights Act (Draw, 2000)

Week 7/8 and 9:

New Topic

Freedom of expression (FOE) was going to be my main focus, the reason I chose to change the topic is because I thought it tied in great with my initial idea. I can still and elaborate on children having an impact in democracy however just on a smaller scale, i wish to show children they can start with things impacting their lives. Which encouraged me to do a new focus group with the teenagers in my video and talk about FOE and how they think their school lives expresses this.

Padlet

 My topic changed and so did my activity I found a good base to do the Forum on and it’s called Padlet. Padlet was very easy to use and i found it to be accessible which is one of the key elements of making a e-learning experience (Gagne). What i really enjoyed about using Padlet is on the forum i can upload my video on their and the children can watch and talk about it at the same time. It can be used at home or in schools which is beneficial being the children can be somewhere comfortable and really relaxed in the comfort of their own home to take part in the activity (Rosenberg, 2001). One article expressed by Fuchs (2014), wrote Padlet it a good classroom tool to have group discussion, they adds it allows freedom for leaving with giving the children confidence with their answer as they can choose to be anonymous. This was exactly what i wished for something that give children freedom to say views (it goes very well with the topic) However it does have disadvantages the article picked up on, one being children have the knowledge that this is broadcast live so it does also give them the freedom to ‘silliness’. Another downfall can be technology is not always reliable and the site rely solely on the internet, so if the connection cut than the activity is compromised. Maybe the creators should have thought to make it into a program which is installed into the hard drive than a internet access site. I was going to take the risk of using Padlet anyways and it just worked well with what i was trying to make.

Piaget vs Vygotsky

Social learning and Cognitive learning has had a major impact in education today. It now shapes E-learning too! Argues Allop, 2016…

Looking at Piaget his theory is about the mind using accommodation assimilation and schema in order to learn. Using his theory i wished to work with their existing schema for what they already knew about FOE and than accommodate that leaning with the new information from the video to than leading them to expand their existing knowledge of the topic. So the video is their to add what they already new and some how find new ideas and gain a bigger insight to FOE.

On the other hand i incorporated Vygotkys theory with there being a online facilitator to give guidance to the viewers while they watch the video. My activity will not be successful without having a audience so i used this social theory in a online forum to get children all around the UK talking about the topics they just learnt. I personally think these who theories had great ideas but it works even better using both theory inside work. I think you lose useful elements just taking one side and not considering the other that is why i chose to look and both point of views to make it work in my activity.

Presentation day

Presentation day in my eyes was successful. I listened to the bits we needed to include within the slides and i tried to make it more about me presenting than the actual Powerpoint presentation itself.  Really listened to the multimedia principles to give me direction with the presentation. On the day i felt nervous, before i presented i thought that i was confidant however when going up and actually doing it i seemed to really forget most of what i wanted to say. I kept stuttering and missed parts out however the most important parts were said and i did have fun while doing it. I thought i should write on each slide to my makers are aware of the bits i missed out so i was not completely regretful about the event.

Padlet

http://whatbrowser.org/ website states that

Padlet sent us a new email informing us that they will no long be supporting Internet Explorer. This could really have an impact in how accessible is the program to the children. they offer newer software which they will be supported by and all i could do is add that in when i present my ideas to make sure the children move on to my second activity which is the key part.

Focus group

I met up with my three participants in which i will be using for my video so i can finally come up with a structure. They gave me feedback of the FOE in schools and the biggest issues they had which were:

• Hair colour
• Uniforms
• FOE in lesson discussion
• Overall just not be able to fully express themselves as a individual

Using their experiences this was going to be the focus of the video clip and my objective is to have the viewers also relate to this and talk about their own experiences.

 

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Form C

I have read the guidelines in the BAECS handbook on the ethics of observing children and have followed them.

 

I have obtained signed permission from Carers and have kept this confidential and securely but can produce it for tutors to see if requested.

 

Signed: S.Matundu

 

Name of student : Samba Matundu

 

Date:  03/03/2017

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Week 11

New year/New teacher

Looking at the quote made me think about there being a lot of access to learning in today’s generation, there is inclusive and creative ways of learning compared to say 30 years ago. But some people will always find learning hard no matter how the world develops, people develop differently also Herbert did not consider where the person lives in the world, yes there is better access in some places of the world but not all (Sandberg and Barnard, 1997). Overall i completely disagree with his saying and think that leaning is in our everyday lives however some people just simply find it difficult and within good reason.

With the start of the new year i was excited to get back to work.

Questions

these questions supported me to stay on track

1. How will you get and keep the learner’s attentions? By using a video that they can relate to, this keeps the mind focused in the activity.
2. How will you inform your learners of the lesson/activity objective(s). With the Online facilitator and also have the objects on top of the Padlet page.
3. How will you remind learners of the applicable knowledge that they learned in the past or their previous experiences? The video is desgined to have them refect back t their own experiances of FOE so if they sucessfuly think of times relating to that topic than they can than do the second part of the activity.
4. How will you teach the information or what type of learning activity or environment will your create to foster learning? I will be using blended learner with the use of Padlet, they can learn with others and also reflect o their own experiences. This part of the task is a group discussion.
5. how will you provide guidance  to the learners (scaffolding/support)? Online facilitator and having the video clip.
6. what type of homework, practice or learning activities will you provide to help them learn? Not so much homework, they just need to be able to reflect.
7. What will you do to let learners know how they are doing? how will you correct, affirm or encourage them? through the online forum in Padlet, i will be encouraging great answers and be pushing them if they are not giving enough reflection with giving them open ended questions.
8. How you know that the learners have ‘learned’ the material or can do the desired tasks? When they get involved in Padlect they already show high levels of cognitive skills if they can be able to do refection and beyond that find ways to actually come up with a solution for their problems with FOE in their schools. 
9. What will you do the enhance the retention & transfer of the new skills, knowledge, and or attitudes? With this task its designed to support their FOE and its a key feature to have confidence in especially in employment, relationships and a lot more. Just with this first step they can really learn the rights they have and understand that others may share the same views and its important to listen to others views. They just need to take what they learnt through the video and reflection and use that in the future than they successful found the meaning of this activity. 

(Kruse, 2009)

Week 12

Online facilitator/Animaker

I made Dextor!

Dextor was created to be a guide for the children, he explains the task and what they should be expecting in the video. As a online facilitator (Salmon,  2004) he was designed to support the children so they do not get confused and follow the task simply. Near the end of the video i realised that one of my spelling was wrong but it was too late as my video was already formatted, so next time i really need to proof read or have another person see my work before i format my work. Dextor was really fun to make i used my own voice to create his audio however the whole thing was built in Animaker which has a lot of cool animated free tools in could in-cooperate in my video and i really would use the programme again.

Filming/Editing

Filming day ran successful, we used the feedback of the focus group as a supportive guide. The participant explained that they found it easy because what they are acting about is real experiences which makes it easier to express feelings. It was just a short clip however the message came across nicely. The scene was based in detention, they are victims of FOE and we used research such as http://ie-today.co.uk/Article/how-do-school-uniforms-affect-student-attitudes and http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/11580714.Bradford_school_sends_more_than_200_pupils_home_for_uniform_breaches/.

The students challenged the teacher by explaining uniforms cannot always enforce good behaviour and does it have an effect on their grades? The video is there to be a message that the children should have their voices heard but not in anyway to clash with the school rules. One of the tools that work is making school council a student society that represents the student body.

I used Sony Vagus pro as i find that its very simple and easy to use. I could have used Windows Movie Maker however as i was using a high definition camera with Sony Vagus the quality would have been more sufficient.

As i used the programme before, it was easy to actually edit this time (Sheth & Nagarajan, 2009).

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Form C

I have read the guidelines in the BAECS handbook on the ethics of observing children and have followed them.

 

I have obtained signed permission from Carers and have kept this confidential and securely but can produce it for tutors to see if requested.

 

Signed: S.Matundu

 

Name of student : Samba Matundu

 

Date:  30/03/2016

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Week 18 Challenges and issues around designing E-learning activities

This lesson was quite reflective on how out experience is going. My biggest struggles was probably minimising my topic and making it short and simple. I got there in the end however in the beginning we see this journey of how i started with this grad idea and it just got smaller and smaller. I wanted to design something that is currently a problem and my troubles in the beginning is i was using my own experience where as i should have been focusing with the focus group and get a incite of their lives. What worked best is the fact that i was so keen on my video idea and new i had the confidence to carry it out. This activity was designed to be accessible for the children in schools or at home so its very important that they can use it anywhere. Mobile learning can be incorporated in it too as my activity is not just limited on the computer or laptop it can be accessed of tables and phones too. As time went on i realised this is blended learning because it was never ending for the children to learn in such a broad way.

Lesson objective is what student will learn and Lesson Outcome is what student can do at the end of the lesson Lesson outcome is a future reference. in this session we looked at SMART now which is:

Specific – topic need to be nawod down

Miserable – feeds in to the outcome

Attainable – cannot be hard or easy

Realistic – fitting the needs (Individual)

Time appropriate – is it a one lesson or series “

Now my lesson Objective was for the children to reflect on their experiences of FOE in school, if is was a bad experience for them they should discuss why and how they can do more in their school to get their voices heard (School Councils). If they had a good experience with FOE in their schools they should share why it went well and encouraged others to follower the routes they took that made it a decent experience. Outcomes is they can communicate with others about their views about their schools witch gives them high levels of cognitive skills.

**last thoughts**

I have gained a lot of  skills from this process such as:

• New editing skills
• The skill to use e-learning researchers into my design
• Adapt to situations and change parts of my project
• Work under pressure
• A lot of knowledge about E-learning that i can now take to practice for learners to get the right outcomes/objectives set.

Thank you for this experience it has truly been amazing!!

Activity 

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Activity 1: Video >> https://youtu.be/IfGwSCzGiP0

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 Activity 2: Padlet >> https://padlet.com/sambamatundu/FOE_1

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